Salford spoken word artist Kieren King is a leading slam performer who once said in an interview that he was inspired by the Bard of Salford, John Cooper Clarke. He has co-run the spoken word night Evidently, and more recently Slamchester. Spit & sawdust is his debut collection. 

He lays his regional cards on the table in ‘The Northern Line’ - “The further south I get / the more Northern I become” - a poem that is part of a section titled The Chip on my Shoulder is Soaked in Gravy.   

‘Going to the Match, 1953’ is presumably based on the Lowry painting, although the artist is not acknowledged, despite lines such as “blues and greys bleeding into pavement and sky”. Maybe a true northerner just knows. Before the poem’s final whistle it turns into something that LS did not depict, the forging of a bond via football: 

 

     A father grips a child’s hand 

     guiding them through a forest of shoulders 

     passing down a love that cannot be taught 

     only walked, only felt, only lived  

 

     And in this moment 

     before the whistle, before the roar 

     the day is already won 

 

King celebrates his home town in poems such as ‘Salford is a Broadway musical’ - “The audience don’t clap politely / like sea lions begging for fish / They are Rocky Horror rowdy” - and ‘Slainte’ - “The man at the bar takes a glass ... pours in the memory of cool Manchester rain.”  

There’s a thoughtful, complicated poem about a character that refuses to acknowledge his own racism: 

 

     He only talks in black and white 

     he only talks in us and them 

     tribal 

     like football 

     he relegates us into divisions 

     and how can we talk things through 

     when every new accent sounds like a threat  

     that sets off the ticking timebomb behind his eyes  

     He smiles at me as if an ally 

     and tells me that he is colourblind  

          (‘Half-time at the derby by the bar at the Star’) 

 

‘Post-it notes on mirrors’ is a love poem that insists: “Love is the mundane made extraordinary”, with a succession of images reinforcing that fact ... “cracked phone screens / and unmade beds / ...  it’s me / fumbling with my words / wondering how I got this lucky.”  

Maybe Kieren King does fumble with his words in some of these poems. But he creates his own kind of poetry out of a process of self-interrogation and honest doubt. ‘This year’, for instance, is a poem that sees chaos and confusion, rather than order, as a natural way of life. ‘I hope you never fit in’ is another poem in the same mould.  

‘A foundation of kindness’ is about a word increasingly employed as a riposte to far-right hate: 

 

     There is a kindness 

     a quiet pride, a heart open wide 

     kind of kindness 

     a steady stream that fights the scream 

     a grit and grind 

     a show-your-teeth-and-your-mind 

     a tough as nails, no detail fails 

     kind of kindness 

 

These poems are not tub-thumping or slogan-brandishing – and all the better for it.  

 

Kieren King, spit & sawdust, Flapjack Press, £10 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

.